SLEEP statement

The SLEEP statement is used to introduce a delay or pause in the execution of a query or a batch of queries for a specific amount of time.

Statement syntax

SurrealQL Syntax
SLEEP @duration;

Example usage

The following query shows example usage of this statement.

-- Sleep one second
SLEEP 1s;
-- Sleep 100 milliseconds
SLEEP 100ms;

For more dynamic usage of sleep, see SurrealDB’s sleep function.

Use cases

SLEEP can be useful in a small number of situations, such as:

• Testing and debugging: can be used to understand how concurrent transactions interact, test how systems handle timeouts and delays, simulate behaviour in more distant regions with longer latency
• Throttling: can be used to throttle the execution of operations to prevent the database from being overwhelmed by too many requests at once
• Security measures: can be used to slow down the response rate of login attempts to mitigate the risk of brute force attacks